Video Transcript
William has been offered a discount
at the local diner since he always has his breakfast there on workdays. He can either have one-fifth or 30
percent off his next meal. Which offer should William
take?
Since these are discounts, this
will be money that should be subtracted from the price. So William is essentially saving
money. So which discount will help him
save the most money, one-fifth off the price or 30 percent off the price?
So essentially, we are comparing
one-fifth, a fraction, to 30 percent, a percentage. Let’s go ahead and make the
fraction and the percentage both be a decimal so we can compare them.
In order to write one-fifth, the
fraction, as a decimal, we need to take the numerator, which is the number on top,
and divide by the denominator, the number on the bottom. So in our calculators, we should
type one divided by five equals. And we get 0.2.
So now let’s convert the 30 percent
to a decimal. So the first thing that we need to
do is to get rid of the percentage sign. So we just have 30. We can go ahead and write in our
decimal point because we’re going to have to move it two places to the left, one
two, so .30.
Now when there’s nothing to the
left of the decimal point, it’s a good idea to place a zero to the left of that
decimal point so that with a decimal point is seen better. So we have 0.30. So we’re comparing 0.2 and
0.30. So the two doesn’t have a zero
after it. However, it would be one hundred
percent okay to add a zero to the end. It doesn’t change the value.
So which discount would be larger,
0.20 or 0.30? It would be the 0.30. Therefore, William should take the
30 percent discount. It’s a larger discount. So he will be saving more
money.
Now as we have looked at 0.20
compared to 0.30, it would have been okay to take away the zero on the end because
it doesn’t change the value. So we could’ve compared 0.2 and
0.3. Again, our answer would still be
the 0.3 is larger. So once again, William should take
the 30 percent off discount.
